The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1)

by Lance McMillian

  The bailiff calls the courtroom to order.

  ***

  An uneventful morning of jury selection gives way to the lunch hour. Scott and I share company and some cold sandwiches. Because of security concerns for Belinda and Tasha Favors, Scott plans to stay close for the duration of the trial.

  He asks, “Where were you last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dropped by your house at midnight, and you weren’t there. You weren’t in your office, either. Do you have some girl on the side I don’t know about?”

  An air of ambiguity surrounds the joke, as if the levity is only a subterfuge to fish for information. Proceed with caution, I tell myself. Lara and I use the condo precisely because Scott drops by my house unannounced at all hours. This moment was inevitable. I lie.

  “Waffle House. Where else would I be at that time of night?”

  “Ugh. I was thinking you might’ve paid Ella a visit. You should, you know.”

  Scott often exhorts me to stop keeping Ella at arm’s length. I don’t dare tell him about Lara. He is a man that plays things by the book, and sleeping with a witness ain’t by the book. I make a non-committal noise at the mention of Ella, willing the topic to go away.

  Scott says, “You need to start taking better care of yourself. You keep eating at that place you’re going to die of a coronary. Too much grease.”

  Me, I love the grease and the atmosphere. Something joyously democratic surrounds the wayward cross-section of humanity that gathers at Waffle House in the dead of night. I look at the witching hour crowd and see in their different stories my own displacement from society. That my first date with Lara took place there seems fitting—realness birthing something new.

  ***

  The first days of the trial contain no surprises. My opening statement promises the jury the goods. An eyewitness will sit in that empty witness chair and identify Corey Miller as the man who killed DeShawn Carter. No name is named. Having made the vow to produce such a witness to the jury, the entire case now rests on the shoulders of a little girl. But that truth has always hovered over this prosecution. Our proof against Corey Miller begins and ends with Tasha Favors.

  The design of our case reflects this reality. Tasha will be our last witness, and every witness is a building block to reach her. Ella handles our law enforcement witnesses and uses them to paint an evocative picture of the murder scene—the victim dead on the ground, his brain half-flapped out on the dirty asphalt of the street. She elicits the phrase “execution-style killing” from one of the testifying police officers, who helpfully provides a visual by touching Ella’s temple with his index finger cocked to simulate the nature of an execution-style kill.

  As the Coroner for Fulton County, Cecil Magnus takes his turn in the witness box under Ella’s guiding hand. He confirms that DeShawn Carter is dead and that the muzzle of the murder weapon was touching Carter’s head at the time of the fatal shot. He also brings his autopsy photos to parade before the jury. I’ve digested more pictures of dead bodies than I care to remember, and these gruesome beauties rival the worst of them.

  Joe’s participation in these early stages is more observer than attorney. None of the evidence so far implicates Miller, leaving Joe with nothing to challenge on cross-examination. He just sits there, the courtroom’s forgotten man. He is competent, but lacks imagination. A better lawyer would ask questions simply to build a rapport with the jury and establish himself as someone who plays fair with the other side’s witnesses. Not Joe. He allows the prosecution to dominate the room.

  Scott’s role as the lead detective on the case presents a quandary. Any other trial, he would be front and center as part of the State’s case. The concern now centers on Tasha. Scott knows her identity—the only potential prosecution witness with knowledge of that closely-guarded secret. If Joe demands the answer of him on cross, Scott will have no choice but to tell the truth. I make the call not to put him on the stand. Softening that decision is that Scott adds little unique value to the meat of our case. His investigation revealed nothing. No one would talk to the police except Tasha. And Tasha can speak for herself.

  ***

  Walking the halls of the courthouse during a lunch recess finds me consumed with thoughts of the trial—the things that happened, the things that didn’t. This focus renders me oblivious to the people I pass, much like when I’m driving and suddenly realize that I have no recollection whatsoever of the past minute or so. I never crash in those situations, protected from disaster by some combination of habit, muscle memory, and subconscious awareness of my surroundings. The same dynamic now operates. I manage to avoid running into people even though I don’t see them.

  The shouting of my name from across the hall awakens me from this particular stupor. I calibrate my brain to pinpoint the source of the noise. The results do not compute—Bernard Barton. He walks up to me and starts a conversation.

  “Counselor, good to see you.”

  He sticks out his hand, daring me to either shake it or not shake it. I’m not sure which. I shake.

  I say, “We shouldn’t be talking.”

  Because he’s represented by a lawyer, I’m prohibited from having any ex parte communications with him. Barton doesn’t care.

  “I’m a lawyer. I know the rules. I can handle you by myself.”

  I nod. Sure you can, Bernie. Our eyes lock. I don’t say anything because I don’t have anything to say. Barton wants to chat.

  “I’m here handling a matter on the side for an old friend. Feels good to get out of the house. I expect I’ll be right back at it full-time soon enough.”

  He sells confidence, but I ain’t buying. God has yet to create the person who is confident in the face of a murder charge. Marsh & McCabe put him on leave when the indictment came down. Yet here he stands, preening for attention. His act may work to seduce young female associates, but I’m unfazed. I’ve prosecuted men much worse than Barton. I’m prosecuting one right now. Barton fancies himself invincible, but tough guys don’t beat up on women.

  He asks, “You here with the Miller trial?”

  I laugh at his counterfeit smugness and leave him to his games. Walking away, I ruminate on the sisterly connection that now links the two of us together. The thought bothers me more than it should—as though Barton and I stand as mirror images of each other. The idea sticks in my throat and refuses to go down. I want to vomit it out.

  ***

  Trials have a rhythm that builds to a crescendo. No matter how much you prepare, the beat of work rarely relents. Something somewhere always requires your attention.

  The Miller trial is no different. Ella and I work together late into the night. My tie long discarded, our shoes strewn across the floor, and the scattered remains of a rushed dinner littering a side table, we sit in my office—me at my desk, her at the conference table—working side-by-side like we have for five years now.

  Amber never displayed a single pang of jealousy about her husband working closely with another woman at all hours. The trust is remarkable in hindsight. The sexual abandon unleashed in me by Lara reveals how close to moral anarchy I always stood. Given the right push, I jumped full throttle into the gorge. Sitting next to Ella tonight, I feel like a different man than the one who used to sit next to Ella. Instead of seeing her as a valued colleague, I imagine the sexual relationship between us that never was. She is beautiful.

  The fickle trajectory of fate teases me like a court jester. My love life is not my own. It is the product of a predetermined destiny that chucks its meat hooks into my sides and guides me to a slaughter not of my own volition—a dead wife with whom I should have grown old, a clandestine affair with a famous starlet who chose me to give herself to, and a beautiful woman I’m bound to hurt, someone who I could bed tonight, probably this exact moment if I walked over to her right now. That last thought tantalizes. The lust flares up. I push the images away.

  Ella catches my stare. She smiles the smile of i
ncipient love—the kind a woman smiles when love is fresh and hopeful, before the hard facts of life whittle the dream down into lukewarm reality. The smile guts me with a jagged-edge machete—the type of tool I used to make trails in the woods where I grew up, the grooves on the edge able to gnaw through the toughest of branches. I break the gaze and pretend to pay attention to my work. Ella asks, “What?” Still smiling that sweet, damnable smile.

  I play dumb, “What?”

  “Why were you looking at me like that?”

  “I was lost in my thoughts.”

  “About what?”

  “Tasha.”

  “Oh.”

  The whole tableau is a lie. Ella’s reality of who I am and what the two of us might be is a fiction, and she lacks the faintest idea. The real world—the secret world I actively hide from her—mocks her ignorance. I hate her stupidity and hate myself for making her stupid.

  We both pretend to work in order to relieve the awkwardness of the moment. I make sure to keep Ella fully clothed in my mind the rest of the night. The focus now rests on Tasha—the last pure and undefiled thing in my life. Maybe Tasha can save me. But first I have to save her by ensuring Corey Miller gets the death sentence his crime surely merits. The high stakes rooted firmly in my mind, I bear down in the ongoing quest to deliver justice to the dead.

  16

  I call Tasha to the stand. I scrutinize Miller’s face and get nothing but blankness for the trouble. The door in the back of the courtroom opens. Heads turn. I watch Miller. He doesn’t twitch. Tasha enters, trailed closely by Belinda. The courtroom is compact. The journey to the front is short. I open the gate for Tasha, offering up a big smile, hoping to reassure her. Belinda sits in a seat on the front row, providing mom a clear view of where her daughter will testify on the stand.

  Miller finally registers Tasha, and the slight flicker of the eyes betrays his knowledge. I imagine the calculations adding up in his head. He killed DeShawn Carter directly in front of Tasha’s house. When Miller notices Belinda, the blank mask he has fronted all trial transforms into a glare of deadly malice. He turns his hand into a gun, points it at her, and fake shoots. God bless Belinda, she absorbs Miller’s hostility and returns it with a death stare of her own.

  The mask drops for only a few seconds. Joe and Judge Ross both miss the performance, but the distressed face of Juror Number Seven shows that she witnessed everything. White as a sheet, she physically backs up in her seat to get away from the defendant. I grab a file. Juror Number Seven is named Clarissa Simon, a white 37-year old Buckhead housewife. Perfect. Simon will no doubt spread the word to the other jurors at the next recess. I just got my conviction.

  The bailiff swears Tasha in. I position myself for the questioning, making a point to block Miller’s view of Tasha. The plan is to start easy, make her comfortable, and introduce her to the jury.

  “Can you state your name for the record?”

  “Tasha Favors.”

  I walk her through her background. We start with where she goes to school, her teachers, and her favorite classes. Tasha makes straight As, and I bring that fact to light. We talk about church and Sunday school. Tasha sings in the choir, and her favorite song is “How Great Thou Art.” I ask her what she does in her free time. Belinda Favors works in a nursing home, and Tasha draws pictures to brighten the days of the residents who live there. I feel like a movie director who requisitioned central casting for a perfect little girl, and they sent over Tasha.

  She projects well. We prepped her early and often. But until people get on the stand, you never know how they will perform under the bright lights. With a 10-year old girl, the unknown is only magnified. Tasha is our entire case. If she freezes, Miller walks free. Her poise so far belies her tender years. She speaks in a clear voice. Everything she says screams authenticity. The jury eats her up.

  Having created a favorable impression, the questioning turns to the day of the murder. The goal is to get our identification of Miller and hightail it out of here. The nerves in my body penetrate to the bones. That’s fine. A lawyer who isn’t nervous at trial needs to find another line of work. I ask Tasha where she was at 4:30 p.m. on the date of the murder. She tells the story of how she sat at the kitchen table at her house working on her math homework while her Nana napped.

  “What was your math homework about?”

  “Fractions.”

  Little details enhance the credibility of a witness. You build trust with a jury on the small stuff before asking about the big stuff. Tasha is doing great.

  “Did something happen to cause you to stop doing your homework?”

  “It got noisy outside. I heard a lot people talking loudly, and I went to the window to see.”

  “What did you see when you looked out the window?”

  All eyes focus on Tasha. The only sounds are the clicks on the court reporter’s keys. In the silence, the impact of each key strike is magnified far out of its normal proportion.

  “I saw a man on his knees in the street. Another man with a gun was talking to him.”

  “How far was your window from the street?”

  “About the distance between me and my mom now.”

  I direct Belinda to stand. The distance between mother on the front row and daughter in the witness stand is maybe forty feet.

  “The man you saw on the street on his knees—had you ever seen him before?”

  “No.”

  Ella moves a blown-up picture of DeShawn Carter into position. I direct Tasha to look at it. She identifies Carter as the man on his knees in the street.

  “The man holding the gun—had you ever seen him before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Mr. Corey.”

  Tasha’s soft-spoken description of Miller as “Mr. Corey” is powerful. The contrast between the respectful 10-year old and the murderous 21-year old represents the wide gulf between everything that is right with the world and everything that is wrong. And both of them live on the same street. I puzzle at a humanity that can produce such disparate outcomes from the same starting line.

  I ask, “How do you know Mr. Corey?”

  “He lives in my neighborhood.”

  “Do you see Mr. Corey in the courtroom?”

  I move for the first time to create a sight line from witness to defendant. Tasha looks at Miller and points without hesitation at the man she saw shoot another person in the head. Amazing. She is the bravest person I’ve ever met in my life. I resume my place to guard Tasha from Miller’s glare.

  “Let the record reflect that the witness identified the defendant, Corey Miller, as Mr. Corey.”

  “You testified that you saw Mr. Corey holding a gun and talking to a man down on his knees in the street. What happens next?”

  “Mr. Corey put the gun to the man’s head and shot him.”

  Miller’s voice, unheard until this moment, suddenly reverberates throughout the small room: “That little bitch be lying!”

  The stillness of the courtroom shatters. Deputies move closer to the defense table. The judge’s gavel bangs. I turn to face Miller, again making sure that I stand in his line of vision to the witness stand. The hatred in his eyes spits out the rawest emotion I’ve ever encountered in my life. He scares me, but I can’t show it. I match his menace with a scowl of my own, encouraging him to transfer his violent urges my way. Anything to protect Tasha.

  Judge Ross speaks, “Mr. Miller, another display like that, and I’ll have you removed from the courtroom.”

  I allow things to calm before resuming. I catch a glimpse of Belinda. Miller’s outburst rattled her. Scott puts his arm around her for reassurance. Belinda wants her daughter out of here. The finish line is close.

  “You saw Corey Miller shoot a man in the head. What did you do next?”

  “I ran to my bed and got under the covers and cried. I was scared.”

  Suddenly the dam breaks. Tasha cries fast-moving tears. The change surprises me. She has
never once cried in my presence. I rush to grab some tissues and take them to her. I hurt for Tasha, but the calculating part of my lawyer brain concludes I couldn’t have scripted that breakdown any better. The jury is now as protective of Tasha as I am.

  “No further questions, Your Honor. Thank you for your testimony, Tasha. You’re a brave little girl.”

  ***

  Joe must be careful. Tasha is a sympathetic witness, and he has to treat her with kid gloves. Handling a child witness on cross-examination is a precarious balancing act for a trial lawyer. The lawyer must simultaneously undermine the truth of the child’s testimony yet avoid appearing to be a big bully who picks on little kids. With dishonest children, this task is hard enough. With honest children, it is near impossible. And Tasha speaks the truth.

  I prepped her for cross-examination, of course. I subjected her to a variety of approaches, some soft, some mildly harsh. Ella did a few rounds with her, too, just to throw Tasha a different look. Our ultimate message to her was twofold—listen carefully to each question and tell the truth. Do that, and everything will be fine.

  As Joe readies himself for his first question, Miller hands him a piece of paper. Joe reads it, frowns, and puts it down on the defense table. He begins.

  “Hello, Tasha. My name is Mr. Parks. I’m just going to ask you some questions, and I want you to tell me the truth, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I love the “yes, sir.” That type of testimonial genuineness is hard to fake.

  “You mentioned where you were living at the time you allegedly saw a shooting in front of your house. My first question is where do you stay now?”

  Hell no. I shoot straight up.

  “Objection, Your Honor, relevance.”

  Joe responds, “He opened the door by talking about her living arrangements.”

  “I didn’t open the door on where the witness is living now. That information has no relevance to this case whatsoever. None.”

  A distracted Judge Ross looks up from what must be his cell phone, oblivious to anything that was just said. He rules, “I’ll allow the question.”